In consultation with your faculty thesis advisor, you will articulate a broad beginning of a thesis topic. Through your initial research in preparation for submitting your thesis proposal and preliminary bibliography, you will begin to focus your thesis topic to an appropriate scope.

Consider the following questions:

• What did you discuss with your advisor about the feasibility of your topic?

• Did your advisor suggest any sources that could be essential?

• What other sources did they suggest you look into?

• What would your “dream” sources be? (e.g., I hope ____’s papers are published. I wonder if there was a trial about _____. I'd like to read newspaper coverage of ___ event from _____ perspective.)

• What sources may be easiest or hardest to attain? What sources will be easier or harder to read and work with and how? What opportunities and risks could a digital version of a particular source present? Where are there gaps or silences in the archives related to your topic, and how might you address these? 

• Where would you locate your topic in the bigger picture? One way to approach that is in terms of its position within social, economic, or political conditions.

• What scholarly conversations are relevant to your topic? Identify the scholars, ideas, and debates that are essential to your topic. How does your thesis fit into these conversations? 

Secondary sources help to situate your thesis in the framework of larger scholarly conversations. Identify scholars whose work you will engage with early on in your research process.

As you search through library catalogs and databases, take note (literally, make lists) of the keywords and terms that you find useful, as well as the Library of Congress Subject Headings associated with your topic. The subject headings will be the same in other library catalogs and databases, and that language provides crucial keyword searching terms.

When you are searching in library catalogs for book length studies about your topic, remember to search broader than your topic as well as in narrower related sub-topics. Many book-length secondary sources will not require reading in entirety. Use tables of contents and indexes effectively to identify crucial chapters and passages. 

Peruse the bibliographies and footnotes in your secondary sources; this will help you find additional relevant secondary sources and may direct you to primary sources in archives, published sourcebooks, databases of primary source collections, and elsewhere. Also take note of dates/events, organization names, personal names, names of particular policies, laws or initiatives etc.; all of these are potential keywords for finding primary sources.

Before you begin searching for primary sources, ask yourself: What types of sources are most likely to contribute perspective on my topic?

Some examples of primary sources include: newspapers and magazines, personal narrative sources like memoirs and letters, government documents, the papers of organizations, and scholarly journals of the historical period. You will search for different types of sources using different techniques.

Use the Advanced Search screen in Library Search to:

• place limits on your search by location, language, or material type.  
• do subject searches. A subject search will look for keywords ONLY in the subject fields of catalog records. Knowing the vocabulary used in the subject searches will help you do effective searches of library collections. For example, Library of Congress Subject Headings use the following keywords to indicate primary sources: sources, letters, interviews, speeches, personal narratives, diaries, correspondence, sermons, notebooks, sketches, description and travel, treaties, pamphlets, biography (includes memoirs), newspapers, periodicals, pictorial works, art, architecture, portraits, caricatures and cartoons, cookery, decorative arts, furniture, material culture, guide books, maps, fiction, poetry, periodicals, newspapers, bibliography, early works to 1800.  It's not a perfect system, but an effective technique. Example search: (united states women) AND (sources or correspondence)
• find reference sources like encyclopedias and historical dictionaries. Never underestimate how helpful these sources are in establishing historical context, suggesting keywords, identifying related people/events/places for your topic and providing bibliographies of important primary or secondary sources.
• identify digital collections of primary sources. Some of the digital primary sources that appear in our catalog are from unique databases that are more effectively searched in their native interface. If you find digital sources in our catalog that you are interested in finding more of, ask a librarian.

Some tips for effective meetings with librarians and thesis advisors:

• Bring a working bibliography with you. Even if you're not sure about many of the sources on there, it will give us an idea of what work you are doing and what direction you are going in.
• If you're looking for a particular source you found cited somewhere else, show your librarian the original source you found the citation in.
• It helps to have an idea about the types of sources you are interested in finding. Is it a personal narrative, a foreign newspaper, a magazine written from a particular political perspective? Do you have secondary sources addressing the relevant "layers" for your thesis questions? Do you need sources that contextualize your topic, provide historical background, or help you understand the historiography of your topic?